This walks through an actual report, section by section. It is a real search for SOLSTICE ROASTING for coffee roasting; coffee shop and cafe services, not a mock-up, and every figure below is read from the report itself.
Every report opens with a registrability score from 1 to 10 and a plain-language label. This one scored 1 out of 10, labelled “Severe registration obstacle”.
The score answers one question: would the USPTO register this name for these goods? It is not a clearance verdict, and it deliberately ignores unregistered web findings, which are reported separately as information. The number is driven by two things read together: how distinctive the name is on its own, and how close the conflicting marks on the register are. Here the name was assessed as suggestive, and the deciding factor was a conflict: a high-risk mark, SOLSTICE, registered for IC 043: Restaurant services.
The report lists every mark the search surfaced, 18 of them here, each with its risk rating, its status on the register, its owner and the exact goods it covers. 1 was rated medium risk or above.
Reading the goods column matters more than reading the class number, because an examiner compares the identifications rather than the classes. The top rows from this report:
| Mark | Risk | Status | Goods |
|---|---|---|---|
| SOLSTICE | high | registered | IC 043: Restaurant services |
| DAFE COFFEE ROASTER | medium-low | filed | IC 030: Coffee |
| SUNRISE COFFEE | medium-low | registered | IC 043: Coffee shops |
| SUNSHINE COFFEE | medium-low | registered | IC 043: Cafe and snack-bar services; Cafe services; Coffee and juice b… |
| COFFEE ROASTERS | medium-low | registered | IC 030: Coffee; Ground coffee beans; Roasted coffee beans |
| DESERT SUN COFFEE ROASTERS | medium-low | registered | IC 030: Roasted coffee |
This is the section most search products leave out, and it is the one that tells you how much the result is worth. The report names the classes searched and every term sent to the register, so nothing is claimed that was not run.
Searching sound-alikes is the part an exact-match check misses. A name is refused for resembling an earlier one, and the register is full of deliberate misspellings that all cite each other. How similar is too similar covers where that line falls.
A name can be refused with no competitor involved at all: because it describes the goods, because it is primarily a surname, because it is geographic, or because of how it is used. This report raised one: §6 Disclaimer requirement.
The report judges the grounds a name and its goods can show. Some grounds turn on how the application is filed and used, such as ornamental use and the specimen, and it says so rather than implying it checked them.
The Basic report covers the federal register. Expert adds the things that exist outside it, reported as findings rather than folded into the score, because the score measures registrability. In this sample that was 9 unregistered uses found through web research and state business records, and 10 domain endings checked.
This matters because U.S. trademark rights come from use, not filing. A business trading under a name for years without ever filing still has rights where it trades, and it appears in no register. Why a clean register search is not the whole answer goes into it.
Every report carries this, and it is not boilerplate. A search can prove a name is a problem. It cannot prove a name is safe, because rights can exist without appearing anywhere searchable. What a report does is turn a vague worry into a specific, sized risk you can decide about before the packaging is printed.
LaunchTime IP is software, not a law firm. No attorney reviews an individual search, and a report is not legal advice. The levels of trademark search explains where an automated screen sits against a full clearance search and a written opinion.
A registrability score with the reasoning behind it, the conflicting marks found on the federal register with their status, owner and goods, an assessment of the name’s distinctiveness, the statutory grounds of refusal that the name and goods can show, and a statement of what was searched and what was not. The Expert report adds unregistered use found on the web, state business records and domain availability.
About a minute. The search queries the live USPTO register several times, including for sound-alikes and meaning-alikes, then analyzes what comes back.
No. A report is an automated screen: it tells you what is on the register and how close it looks. An opinion is a lawyer’s judgment about what that means, with their name behind it. LaunchTime IP is software, not a law firm, and no attorney reviews an individual search.
No search can. It can prove a name is a problem, and it can size the risk of the ones it finds, but rights can exist without appearing in any register. Any service promising certainty is selling something that does not exist.
See the full Basic report or the Expert report, both free to read.